Louis Feuillade

Biography
by Sandra Brennan

Louis Feuillade was an important and extremely prolific director of early silent films. Born in Lunel, France, Feuillade attended a Catholic seminary as a boy and then served four years in the cavalry before moving to Paris in 1898. By 1902, he had become a writer for the Right Wing royalist press and four years later began working in French film as a screenwriter. A short time after that, he began directing films. In 1907, Feuillade was appointed chief of production in charge of supervising all of Gaumont films, a job he did in addition to directing. During his less-than 20-year career, the hard-working Feuillade directed over 800 films of different lengths and a wide variety of genres; he also wrote at least 100 film scripts for other directors. In 1915, he served in the French army but was seriously wounded and discharged. Feuillade is best remembered for directing the Fantomas and the Vampire series of fantasies and for being the first to utilize the camera techniques that would later effect the Nouvelle Vague directors of the late '50s. Feuillade's films were also instrumental in shaping the conventions of suspense films and thrillers and in inspiring the German expressionist filmmakers of the 1920s.